Re-reading of: The Agenda of the Agresiv Dislecksick

 
In September 1995 my activist manifesto ‘Agenda of the Agresiv Dislecksick’ was published in DAIL (Disability Arts in London) magazine. At the time of its publication, dyslexia was seen as a childhood disease that made you bad at reading and writing. I rejected almost all of society’s interpretations of what it meant to be dyslexic, instead building upon the position that he was very, very, good at being dyslexic.

Despite being in a special educational dyslexia unit from the age of 9, the severity of my dyslexia meant that I left school at 16 being almost completely illiterate. I graduated from art college aged 21 and by the time I wrote ‘Agenda of the Agresiv Dislecksick’ at 25, I had come to the conclusion that acceptance and celebration was the only way I would be able to continue to live my life without eroding my very being at every twist and turn in my day-to-day experience of the text heavy society we live in.

And it was from this position that I wrote ‘Agenda of the Agresiv Dislecksick’. The aggression is not about anger, it is more about the fact that when you sit outside of the normal experience, simple day-to-day activities can be an extraordinary act of will that almost no one will notice is taking place.

Click here to see the film with a Q&A as part of a presentation for Disability Arts Online